​One of Phenomenology’s projects is ‘bring things to nearness’ and this has some very useful implications for understanding human well-being. This paper will share insights about dignity metaphorised as honour-wound, delineated through a process of phenomenological reflection and contemplation upon human living and the experience of, or absence of, dignity. The dialogical and reflective process we used brought several kinds of dignity to nearness that we have named and delineated. Further, the particular call of dignity, brought closer through the experience of serious illness, opened up the possibility of answering this crucial question: What is it that dignity holds in order to speak of well-being?How does dignity speak of wellbeing?The quiet gaze of a captured leopard through a fence; the evocative laughter of Maya Angelou as she reads her poem ‘I will rise’; the intelligence shining from a disfigured face; the search for home and belonging as ‘the owl calls my name’ to the mortality that is mine: What kind of dignity is this?Through film excerpts, poetry, paintings and phenomenological prose, we wish to clarify and evoke the phenomenon of dignity as it is given in varied ways by the fourfold dance of earth, sky, mortality and divinity. We will take a particular focus by briefly pointing to the kind of language that is up to the task for understanding well-being as intertwined with the experience of ‘honour-wound’.

Between autonomy and heteronomies in the existential becoming of language

Wasik, Z. (Philological School of Higher Education in Wroclaw)

The subject matter of this paper will constitute an evolutional approach to individual/collective dimensions of language as a set of extraorganismic/intraorganismic properties of its speakers and learners viewed from the perspective of its existential becoming in discursively determined life-worlds through transgenerational transmission of inborn speech faculties and ​conventionally established verbal signs. Therefore, it will be necessary to specify which of the existence modes of language along with its inherent/relational features are autonomized as the definitional model of linguistics, and which of the forms of its manifestation should be treated as belonging to heteronomous conditionings of objects studied by its neighboring disciplines. In this context, the author will start with the enumeration of these observable and inferable modes in which language exists, manifesting itself through: (1) externalized speech products, (2) internalized thought products, (3) concrete processes of articulation and audition, (4) mental aptitudes of sign-creation and sign-interpretation, (5), relationships between verbal signs, their meaning, and use, (6) mental associations between verbal signs, (7) observable links between interpersonal collectivities, (8) assumable links between intersubjective collectivities, (9) physiological and intellectual endowments of human individuals, and (10) genetic codes transmitted in the evolution of human species. Taking a structural-systemic perspective, the author will discuss three conceptual levels on which the object of linguistic studies is investigated: (1) language in general—language in particular, (2) language ex definitione—language in abstracto—language in concreto, and (3) language as a theoretical construct—language as an inductive generalization—language as an autonomous sociolect—language as a heteronomous idiolect. To summarize the discussion about the heteronomous existence modes of language and its autonomization in their use and cognition, the author will conclude that not only the linguists are able to autonomize their investigative object. Any heteronomy of language can be made autonomous from any (inter)disciplinary point of view.

A disembodied existence: Is it possible, and do we want it?

Fjelland, R. (University of Bergen)​"After the Singularity, We'll All be Robots" according to Ray Kurzweil. The singularity is supposed to be the point when computers have acquired the same intelligence as humans (allegedly a few decates from now). If this is feasible, it will be the fulfillment of the Cartesian dream of a complete control not only of nature, but of our own existence. The basic idea is that we are our brains, and our brains are merely information. Therefore, we can be downloaded and preserved, and if we wish, uploaded to a mechanical body.It is easy to dismiss this idea of scientific immortality as crazy. However, Kurzweil is definitely somebody. He is a famous inventor, owner of several high-tech companies, author of several books, and the current technical director of Google. He has probably millions of followers.In this presentation I will argue that this is not feasible, and when we think seriously about it, we do not want it. I will follow Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty in pointing to the the fact that we do not have a body, but that we are our body. Although we cannot exclude other -- different -- life forms in the universe, we cannot imagine a human existence without a body embedded in a lifeworld.

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